GMO

White PaPer
December 2011

You Can Bank on It: European Banks Need Tons of Money
Richard P. Mattione

T

he global economy has been one victim of the recent crisis of European sovereign debt, but Europe’s banking sector and the investors who have financed it will be the next. A great deal of pushing and shoving has forced European authorities to accept that there is a problem in their banking sector. Some are working hard to understand the problems and others see themselves as immune, though they probably are not; but all have been tempted to let political factors influence decisions that need to be based on sound economic and regulatory footings. Thus the first response is to say, “European banks, no thanks!” until banks’ lending problems and capital needs are fully addressed. Sovereign debt in the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) countries has become so large as to generate questions of bank liquidity and solvency. Indeed, in an earlier paper1 I argued that Greece was bust and the other four PIIGS countries posed daunting problems for the financial system, with perhaps as much as a decade being necessary to prove that cases such as Italy could be managed. Greece’s sovereign debt problems do not need to be a precedent for the other nations and their banks. Meanwhile, regulators in the other PIIGS countries (a new acronym is needed for PIIGS countries excluding Greece: IPSI perhaps, since some of the others do not sound so nice) and the European authorities in general face a nexus of problems on sovereign debt and banks, and sometimes real estate. Those problems are large enough to threaten European growth if extreme deleveraging becomes the main response to the current problems in the financial system. But it is also important not to go for grand solutions that worsen the problems. This paper continues my earlier work, with a look at the capital strength of the banks within Europe. My analysis will show that: 1. The amount of capital needed by European banks is substantial, even assuming that economic recovery and sovereign debt resolution proceeded so as not to generate substantial new losses; 2. Greece’s default alone poses no significant direct risk to banks outside Greece, though its default essentially will force a redo of the Greek banking system; 3. Requiring capital buffers to back sovereign bond positions in other PIIGS countries would lead to a further, large incremental need for capital at banks;
1

4. Allowing banks to write up their capital for gains on German bunds makes little difference except for German banks. And it is in any case an unwise solution if one wants prudential regulation that is truly prudent; 5. Spanish banks have the greatest capital shortfall, a fact to some extent already recognized in the attempts of the Spanish authorities to restructure and recapitalize the cajas (saving banks); and, 6. In spite of all the bad news, it is necessary not to go overboard, for setting excessive capital requirements will surely lead to a deleveraging that damages economies, not just bank investors.

Recent Trends in Cross-border Claims
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has for decades provided data on the foreign claims of one country’s banks on all entities in a second country. They offer a great place to start examining the cross-border impact of the crisis.2 As of the end of June this year, Italian borrowers posed the biggest challenge among PIIGS countries, responsible for $939 billion of claims to the other BIS member nations (see Table). The list continues down through Spain, Ireland, and Portugal, eventually reaching Greece, to whom the banks had $131 billion of exposure at the end of June.
Consolidated Foreign Claims of Reporting Banks
Ultimate Risk Basis ($ Billions)

Note: French claims on French entities (for example) are not foreign claims, so no entry Source: Bank for International Settlements Data as of June 30, 2011

Several patterns can be seen. French banks hold the biggest exposure to PIIGS countries, some 27% of the total, trailed by German and U.K. banks at 20% and 14%, respectively; no other nation’s banks exceed 10%. French banks hold 42% of the Greek claims, partly reflecting Greek banks with French parents. French banks are also heavily involved in Italy, in this case close to 44% of banking sector claims. The only comparable degrees of reliance are U.K. banks in Ireland (30%) and Spanish banks in Portugal (43%); German banks are the most prominent outsider in Spanish claims with a 24% share, somewhat ahead of France, and are also noticeably represented in Ireland, with 24% of claims. Historical patterns probably can be cited to explain the role of U.K. banks in Ireland and Spanish banks in Portugal, and may well involve corporate rather than sovereign credit.
2

By definition, the data aggregate all claims, rather than separating central government, other levels of government, etc. Thus these data measure (for example) the overall exposure of French banks to Italy, not the exposure to the Italian sovereign alone. These data reflect BIS membership, not quite identical to eurozone membership, nor identical to Europe’s geography. And they do not measure Italian banks’ exposure to Italian entities at all, by definition of being cross-border claims.

GMO

2

You Can Bank on It – December 2011

By contrast, Japanese banks are essentially uninvolved except for a modest position in Italian claims (less than 5% in any individual PIIGS country). U.S. banks (especially compared to their large size) are essentially uninvolved in any of these markets, with the largest exposure in percentage terms taken by claims on Ireland – even though a U.S. entity, securities company MF Global,3 was among the first casualties of the European sovereign debt problem. Claims on PIIGS countries have declined since the end of 2009, the last data before Greece’s problems were made manifest. The European decision to support Greece allowed banks and other creditors to exit sovereign lending to PIIGS nations as existing bonds matured, to be replaced by official creditors such as the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) and the European Central Bank (ECB). The few cases of increased exposure all come from low bases, such as Swiss exposure to Spain and U.S. exposure to Portugal, and the Swiss cases may even reflect loans denominated in Swiss francs, given the sharp appreciation of the Swiss franc. Contagion has become the watchword recently. This can be seen in the wide spreads for the euro-denominated interbank market, which hit 100 basis points on December 1, whereas trading more typically would occur in the range of slightly more than 20 basis points. Some of the possibilities of contagion can be addressed with the BIS data. A more noticeable involvement of U.S., U.K., and Japanese banks can be seen in the French and German markets. U.K. and U.S. banks each have around 20% of the non-French exposure to French entities, followed in third place by German banks. Meanwhile, French banks have led with somewhat more than 15% of the cross-border claims on German entities, followed closely by the Italian, U.S., and Dutch entities. Italy’s rather high position in the German claims may reflect the fact that one large Italian bank acquired a fairly substantial German bank a few years ago. While banking entities outside the eurozone are not heavily exposed to the problems of PIIGS sovereign debt, a contagion that spreads to the sovereign debt of France or Germany would draw more attention to the U.S. and U.K. banks; the Japanese bank exposures appear to be light despite the attention recently given to the claims on Italian sovereigns held by Nomura Securities.4

BIS Rules and the Banks’ Capital Requirements
Before evaluating bank capital needs, it is worthwhile to do a quick review of a few key points of the BIS regulatory system. The discussions on the BIS rules began in the 1980s, and reflected U.S. fears that the lack of uniform capital requirements diminished the competitiveness of U.S. banks in the face of lax capital requirements in Japan. The rules focus on risk assets (not necessarily the same as risky assets) and the Tier I and Tier II capital required to back those assets. Different assets have different risk weights, ranging from 0% to 100%. Exposure to sovereign debt issued by developed nations was not counted as a risk asset. In early days this was identified as a philosophical defect, but until recently it was ignored as a likely source of serious problems. Some private sector exposures, especially securitizations and mortgages, draw less than a full weight; weights assigned to the property sector vary widely across countries to reflect differences in the quality of the collateral and historical experience. Not surprisingly, the 0% risk weighting on sovereign debt of developed nations encouraged banks to take on government bonds after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, a repeat of the yield curve play that has been a feature of many bank recapitalizations over the decades. Early versions were very generous in their definitions of Tier I capital and in the ability to count Tier II capital (subordinated structures); the current rules sometimes appear too strict, or at least arbitrary, with some mandatory convertibles excluded from the EBA calculations of Tier I capital because the conversion date is later than the middle of 2012. The rules are also flexible in their determination of whether specific assets were impaired, particularly those deemed substandard when payments are still being made. A fear that regulators have been dilatory in assessing banks’ risks is one of the factors exacerbating the current crisis.

3 4

MF Global would not have been captured in this data because it was not a bank. Nomura is a broker, not a bank, so its positions would not have been captured in the BIS data.

GMO

3

You Can Bank on It – December 2011

Another weakness of early versions of the BIS standards was the inclusion of deferred tax assets (DTAs) in capital calculations when it could take years, even decades, to make enough money to transform DTAs into tangible capital. The pretense that DTAs always represent core capital was a key feature in Japan’s prolonged restructuring, and it was not addressed finally until 2003. The second round of BIS requirements, BIS II, was implemented in a relatively favorable economic environment, so had modest effects in most developed markets except Japan. The third round, BIS III, will be implemented over the rest of this decade, but is being done at a more trying time for banking systems throughout the developed world. The BIS III rules extend the requirements to other areas such as liquidity in addition to capital. But for now the main problem seems to be capital; if there were more, the market would not be worrying about liquidity and deposit flight at European banks.

The Capital Requirements of European Banks
So what are the capital needs of European banks? Earlier this year the European Banking Authority (EBA) conducted stress tests on 90 banks from European Union (EU) countries. The press release announcing the 2011 results cited a need of merely 26 billion euros after taking into account capital raisings done in the first four months of 2011.5 Immediately, the second guessing began, with most suggesting that figures of several hundred billion euros would be more plausible, and the EU came to suggest figures closer to 100 billion euros by the time fall of 2011 rolled around. Thus, the first question is what level of capital to aim for. The BIS III rules aim for Tier I capital equivalent to a minimum of 7% of risk assets at individual banks, with notions of higher requirements for “Globally Significant Financial Institutions,” otherwise known as G-SFIs. While the new rules do not take effect until 2019, the capital is needed now, which largely rules out earlier hopes that the banks could accumulate the necessary capital via their earnings over the rest of the decade, especially if they constrained themselves in the paying of dividends. The analysis here is based on the assumption that the capital must be accumulated now to assure depositors. We use the data from the EBA’s stress tests, which are quite comprehensive even if one is unhappy with the way they used the data.6 Banks in our sample reported operating profits in 2010, before the crisis worsened, generally below 2% of risk assets; the exceptions were a few banks with substantial operations in emerging markets. Once one allows for taxes on profits and the various impairments that have already been identified in areas such as mortgages and sovereign bonds, normal profits are not enough to allow a rapid accumulation of real capital. Shy of that, a bank can take capital gains where they may exist to cover such losses as can no longer be avoided, but that inevitably drives down future earnings.

5 6

European Banking Authority, “2011 EU-Wide Stress Test Aggregate Report,” July 15, 2011. We excluded one bank, Dexia, from our analysis. Dexia was given a clean bill of health, but has since entered workout proceedings.

GMO

4

You Can Bank on It – December 2011

Scenario 1: Excluding deferred tax assets (DTAs) A key question is how much real capital the banks currently have. Here we insist on one adjustment to the EBA data in all scenarios; since most DTAs are not money at hand but merely a promise of money in the future, they should not be counted in capital. If that were the only adjustment necessary, the situation would not be so severe. For the 89 banks in this sample, replacement of DTAs with new capital would require approximately 36 billion euros of new Tier I capital raisings to reach a Tier 1 capital ratio of 7%. Banks from Italy and Spain, which would need 11 billion euros and 18 billion euros of new capital, respectively, represent almost all of the needs (see Exhibit I). The amount would roughly double, to 76 billion euros, if the capital standard were set at 8%, and more than triple at 9%. Spain and Italy would still lead the charge to capital markets at a target of 9%, with needs of 52 billion and 30 billion euros, respectively; the amounts for France and Germany start to be noticeable at 24 billion and 17 billion euros, respectively. The capital needs of banks from other European nations are modest in this “DTAs only are adjusted” scenario. The absence of Irish banks is particularly striking, as it will be in other scenarios, but only because the government had already promised, pre-stress test, substantial amounts of capital to Irish banks in exchange for further write-offs.
Exhibit 1 Capital Needs of Eurozone Banks
Scenario 1: DTAs

60 50 Billions of Euros 40 30 20 10 0 Tier I Capital Target 5% 7% 9%

Source: EBA; GMO

GMO

5

You Can Bank on It – December 2011

Scenario 2: Incorporating Greece’s sovereign debt The need to replace DTAs with real money is not the only reason why European banks will need more capital. The next obvious need comes from Greece’s default,7 which is worth examining separately.8 The incremental amount of capital necessitated by Greek’s default is surprisingly small for all the ink that has been spilled on Greece. Banks need an extra 17 billion euros of capital to hit the 7% standard, concentrated mostly on the Greek banks, and 30 billion euros if the banks must achieve a 9% Tier I standard (see Exhibit 2). The market is unlikely to provide that level of recapitalization for Greek banks before wiping out existing shareholders, so, effectively, the recent default has ended the Greek banking system as previously known. Otherwise, things look rather similar to the first scenario, which only examined the exclusion of DTAs. The amount is smaller than the market fears for two reasons: first, as seen earlier in the BIS data on cross-border claims, a significant amount of Greek exposure was moved off banks’ balance sheets in the year and a half since the crisis started, so there is less to write off now; second, no knock-on effects from the default or a European recession are assumed in this scenario.
Exhibit 2 Capital Needs of Eurozone Banks
Scenario 2: Adding Greece

60 50 Billions of Euros 40 30 20 10 0 Tier I Capital Target 5% 7% 9%

Source: EBA; GMO

7 8

Notwithstanding that many view the Greek restructuring as a default, it did not constitute an event that would trigger the default clauses in credit default swap contracts. In this and all succeeding scenarios a few banks will have to write off all of their existing capital. In those cases we assume that the restructured bank will emerge from a position of zero capital, not negative capital, reducing the capital requirements on the system. The affected banks are relatively small, and this adjustment does not affect the system calculations by very much.

GMO

6

You Can Bank on It – December 2011

Scenario 3: Dealing with sovereign debt problems in Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain The next factor that might require more bank capital is the perceived higher risk of the other four PIIGS sovereigns: Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. The question is how much adjustment to make for each country. Italy and Spain retain rather higher ratings than Ireland or Portugal, though recently they have seen higher yields on their government paper. The mild assumption here is that not one of these nations defaults; rather, prudential considerations prompt regulators to ask for greater capital cover. The adjustment used here will be 10%, in line with market discussions of the last few months. Creating a capital buffer equal to 10% of the face value of those holdings, even in the case of a mere 7% Tier I capital ratio, drives the financing need for European banks from 53 billion euros to 94 billion euros, with virtually all of the incremental needs focused on Italian and Spanish banks (see Exhibit 3). In aggregate, this much capital is probably available in the system, but whether investors are interested in taking on that much extra Italian and Spanish exposure even as sovereign debt creeps higher is a tougher question. If the capital standard is raised to 9%, the needs are correspondingly greater: 219 billion euros. Those needs are still concentrated on Italian and Spanish banks, but the needs in France and Germany do become noticeable: 33 billion euros and 24 billion euros, respectively. With bank capitalizations not that much higher than the new capital needs, equity investors can survive but will not be smiling: as of December 7, 2011, the needs projected here represent 122% of the market capitalization on average for the Italian banks, and 49% for listed Spanish banks. This implies dilutions of 34% for French banks, but 50% for German banks. The amounts in Italy and Spain make most existing bank investments uninteresting; though the Portuguese capital raisings are only a “few” billion euros, most Portuguese banks would also prove uninteresting because of high dilution.
Exhibit 3 Capital Needs of Eurozone Banks
Scenario 3: All PIIGS

Scenario 4: Revaluing German bunds only helps German banks – and not by much Some – mostly Germans – have suggested that if a haircut on Italian debt is necessary, it would be fair to write up the holdings of German bunds to reflect the appreciation they have enjoyed this year as most other European debt has stumbled. Despite the talk, a write-up makes surprisingly little difference. If a 7% Tier I capital ratio is desired, only 7 billion euros of financing needs are removed, though it does practically end the financing needs of German banks (see Exhibit 4). In the 9% Tier I capital scenario, the reduction is from 219 billion euros to 199 billion euros. This is mostly to the benefit of German banks, with capital needs of a mere 11 billion euros even in the 9% Tier I capital scenario, with an implied dilution of 32% for the holders of German bank stocks. One can understand why Germans have been the main proponents of this solution. It is worth noting, though, that it would reduce earnings on bunds from around 3.5% per annum to 2% per annum after the write-up, further showing how “solutions” often dilute future earnings power.
Exhibit 4 Capital Needs of Eurozone Banks
Scenario 4: All PIIGS and write up bunds

Scenario 5: Sovereign bonds as risky assets One further scenario, not currently envisaged in the BIS rules, also bears watching. What if banks were forced to treat sovereign loans as risky assets, rather than enjoying the current risk weighting of 0%? This could be considered to be a sort of BIS 2.5 capital rule.9 The simulation here assumes that DTAs are not counted in bank capital and that the 50% cut in Greek sovereign debt is incorporated, but no other losses on PIIGS sovereign debt is included in the numbers. Now suppose that sovereign debt had the same capital requirement as risk assets – in other words, assign a risk weighting of 100% rather than 0% to sovereign debt. Holdings of the sovereign bonds of PIIGS countries accounted for 26% of the total sovereign exposure reported by these 89 banks at the end of 2010. A need to hold capital against the other 74% of the sovereign exposure, in addition to adjustments already made in the above scenarios, dramatically raises the capital needs of European banks. Even in the case of a mere 7% Tier I capital ratio, treating sovereign debt as a risky asset drives the financing need for European banks to 110 billion euros (see Exhibit 5). This scenario is tougher on French and German banks than on Italian and Spanish banks in comparison to Scenario 3. It is still the Spanish and Italian banks that need the most capital – 33 billion euros and 22 billion euros, respectively. The heavier incremental burden on French and German banks results from their large amounts of sovereign claims outside the PIIGS countries, while Italian and Spanish banks have their sovereign claims in most cases focused on PIIGS countries (Italy for the Italian banks, Spain and to a lesser extent Portugal for the Spanish). If the capital standard is raised to 9%, the needs are unimaginable: 289 billion euros. Spanish banks still have the largest capital demand, 69 billion euros; but French needs exceed those of Italian banks, and German capital demands at 43 billion euros barely lag those of the Italian banks. As in the earlier scenarios, equity investors can survive but will not be smiling. As of December 7, 2011, the needs are 98% of the market capitalization on average for the Italian banks, 60% for the French banks, and 48% and 70% for Spanish and German banks, respectively. Just as in terms of total capital needs, the dilution figures in this scenario are more favorable for Spanish banks and less favorable for French and German banks because all sovereign bonds become risky assets.
Exhibit 5 Capital Needs of Eurozone Banks
Scenario 5: Adjusting all sovereigns

Some of the financial firms we meet at GMO have already started referring to such scenarios as BIS 2.5.

GMO

9

You Can Bank on It – December 2011

The Neutron Bomb of Capital Calculations
One obvious question is whether one should move to so extreme a scenario as provisioning against all sovereign debts, or even all European sovereign debt. Ever-expanding capital requirements can be the neutron bomb of banking regulation; the branches might still be standing, but the banks themselves would be barely recognizable if they were to survive the cataclysm. Once the Germans understand that they too are exposed, they presumably will be amenable to more reasonable approaches to the sovereign debt problems, such as more generous volumes and maturities at collateral facilities or even a direct use of the ECB to support sovereigns so as to avoid crushing the banking system. The cataclysm plays out because the banks do have an alternative to raising capital – shrink the balance sheet. Deleveraging is already going on in a number of countries, with loan-to-deposit ratios dropping in recent months in Portugal, Spain, and Italy. This reduces the capital needs of banks, but fairly quickly starts to cut into the muscle of the financial system. The banks have little alternative but to keep holding sovereign debt in the short term, since it is the collateral for their borrowing needs. In countries such as Spain, a big chunk of private sector loans cannot be reduced because they involve property that will be inactive for years, perhaps a decade. So, once banks trim their healthiest borrowers and perhaps reduce their overseas exposures, they quickly run into the need to cut loans to small and medium enterprises, providing another negative impulse to European growth. Perhaps more serious is the direct risk that Spain’s real estate problems pose to Spanish banks, which could expand to indirect risks for other banks. Recent conversations in Spain have led me to the conclusion that there are over 200 billion euros of property loans on raw land and developments, which will have little income-producing potential this decade. While Spanish banks have done some provisioning, there is much more to do, and the losses will be high.10 The incoming Spanish government is rumored to be interested in accelerating this resolution through a good bank/bad bank solution. A few of the banks could probably cover their capital needs through further asset sales, but most of the losses would probably have to be backstopped by capital infusions by the Spanish sovereign, temporarily raising its own deficit.

Conclusions
Recapitalization efforts by European banks are starting to gear up. Within the last few weeks, the Italian bank Unicredit has scheduled a new capital raising of 7.5 billion euros; Commerzbank of Germany has replaced preferred bonds with equity; Spain’s BBVA has sold a mandatory convertible bond worth 3.5 billion euros to retail customers; and Spain’s Santander has sold a stake in its Chilean subsidiary, scheduled a group placement of holdings in the Brazilian subsidiary, and announced a deal to sell 95% of its unlisted Colombian subsidiary. The family jewels are being sold. I believe those deals are merely the beginning. The capital needs of European banks are large – in some scenarios dwarfing the 100 billion euros identified by the Europeans earlier this year even without incorporating the needs that might arise from a European or global recession. Spanish and Italian banks face the greatest needs, but there are plausible scenarios that would also generate large capital calls from French and German banks. In any case, you can bank on it: European banks need tons of money.

10 On

December 8, 2011, the Spanish Deposit Insurance Fund announced that Banco Sabadell would absorb the failed caja CAM from the Deposits Guarantee Fund. The price was one euro after the fund injected 2.5 billion euros of new capital and also agreed to cover 80% of potential losses on the portfolio.